Weak Flesh (28 page)

She clutched Meghan's hand fiercely. "You must promise me or I won't reveal anything."

"All right, I promise."

"Good. The Reverend Mr. Jolly is a – a strict man, but I'd always thought him a good man." Her face hardened. "I was gravely mistaken. He is
not
a good man. It was he I saw quarreling with the woman at the Swamp."

She hurried on when she saw the alarm in Meghan's features. "Don't worry. The woman wasn't Ellen Carver."

"Then – "

"I know the Carver girl. It wasn't she." A look of pain crossed over Mrs. Jolly's thin face before she quickly replaced it with pure hatred. "The woman was his daughter. His daughter by another woman."

She paused, took a deep breath, and continued. "I think I'd much rather live with the knowledge of his betrayal than have the entire community abuzz with his disgusting behavior."

An expression of calm serenity settled over her features. "I imagine I'll rather enjoy keeping the Reverend's little secret," she confessed with a sly smile of victory.

Meghan left the Jolly house as soon as decorum allowed, eager to explain to Gage the reason for the Reverend's drinking and odd behavior. She had no intention of keeping the promise she'd made to Mrs. Jolly.

What a strange couple, she thought. She'd been naïve to suppose a man of God would be unfaithful to his wife, but that was preferable to murder.

As she reached her bicycle, the western sky had darkened like a portent of ill winds, and she became aware that she needed to hurry not to miss dinner with her father.

Chapter 31

Drained of energy after the interrogation with Wade, Gage felt a fever edging upwards. Still, he couldn't stop now. Regardless of how ill his body or how addled his brain, the ugly elements of the case niggled his mind and gave him no peace.

He hauled himself up from his desk and lumbered into the reception room to check on Michael Hayes. The man still slept heavily and a light snoring emanated from his jail cell.

That decided it for Gage. Whatever Hayes had to explain about his behavior would have to wait until morning, along with Gage's questions about the secret marriage. "I'm going home, Henderson." Gage retrieved his hat and headed down the stairs.

"You look a mite flushed, Marshal," the Sergeant observed. "Are you all right? Snake bites ain't nothing to fool with."

"Doc says it's nothing that rest won't cure. Mind the prisoners closely, would you? I don't want a riotous crowd getting ideas about one or both of those boys."

"Humph, not boys either one of them," Henderson muttered, just loud enough for Gage to hear as he gingerly made his way down to the first floor.

He unhitched his buggy and mounted his horse rather clumsily, letting the mare find her way down Main Street to Church's Boarding House. Sliding off her back, he tethered her and dragged himself through the front doors.

Off to the parlor on the right two elderly gentlemen played a card game while another read a newspaper by a dim lamp. No one paid Gage a bit of attention as he limped up the stairs to his room at the end of the hall.

#

Sergeant Henderson's ruddy complexion flushed with surprise when Meghan stopped at the Station House on her way home from the Jolly residence. "Oh, I say, Miss Bailey. The Marshal's gone home already, looking feverish and plumb tuckered, I'd say."

At Meghan's frown of disapproval he added, "Came straightaway here instead of going home to change. You know the Marshal."

"That I do," she grumbled. "I wonder if Papa should pay him a house call?"

"Don't think so, Miss Meghan. The Marshal just needs rest. He ought to have gone home, but put in near a full day's work, instead." He looked stymied by the foolishness of young folks.

Meghan's shoulders slumped. She'd have to tell Gage her news in the morning, she supposed, feeling decidedly dejected at not being able to share the striking tale of the Reverend and his wife. Then she recalled that she was still annoyed with Gage and felt even more dispirited.

Henderson looked meaningfully toward the jail cells on his left. "Got two fellas in there now."

Meghan lifted her brow. "Really? Who?"

"Michael Hayes and that Jim Wade." The Sergeant sniffed in distain. "Protecting the one – that'd be Wade – and the other got hisself soused at the Tavern."

She peeked around the corner to the jails, but both cells were now dark and she could make out nothing but shadowy outlines. She started to leave, but at the top of the stairs, Henderson spoke again.

"Don't be wandering the streets in the dark, Miss Bailey."

"Oh, don't worry, I have my bicycle. I'll be home in a jiffy." As she descended the steps to the lower lobby, she shouted goodnight and walked out into the cold night air to retrieve her machine.

She remembered Henderson's warning when the errant thought that she might stop by Gage's room to check on him flitted through her mind. She knew she couldn't worry her father any more than she already had, so she cycled home as fast as her aching legs allowed only to find Papa had already dined and was now reading in his favorite chair by the parlor fire.

Meghan had Abby serve her a dinner tray in the parlor so she could visit with her father before he retired for the night. Long after he'd gone upstairs to his own bedroom, she stared into the smoldering embers and finally allowed herself to relive the last two days.

Permitted herself to think of Gage in anything more than practical terms, a girlhood crush gone sour. An experiment in her growing sexuality.

She nearly convinced herself.

Her arms and legs tingled when she thought of him. Her body ached again for the release he'd given her in the shanty. Was that normal? She thought so, but did it also make her a wanton? No, she was shrewd enough to recognize the power of mating, the primal necessity of physical attraction.

Was it only that between her and Gage?

She'd never been in love before. At least she didn't think so. Was love the emotion he'd aroused in her? If so, it was damned miserable. Painful, but wonderful, she admitted.

She felt vaguely annoyed that Gage's clever hands and mouth knew exactly how to set her heart tripping and her blood boiling. How many women had he practiced on to gain such experience, she wondered peevishly?

Recognizing the faint stirring of jealousy, she shoved it aside. Gage was a man! Of course, he'd had sexual encounters, probably dozens of them. Still the thought gnawed at her, stoking her restlessness.

Humming beneath the surface and adding to her frustration was the desperate knowledge that Gage didn't intend to demonstrate all that experience with her again. At least not for now.

As she climbed the stairs to her bedroom, an inexplicable sadness weighed on her, almost as if she'd suffered a great loss. Though it was scarcely nine o'clock, she bathed and dressed for bed, sure she'd fall asleep at once, considering the harrowing events of the past few days.

She emptied her mind of all her suspicions about her neighbors, of all the details of the case, of the murder weapon and the loss of her friend Nell.

She felt the sweet relief of sleep finally take over.

#

Gage scouted Mrs. Church's linen cabinet for extra blankets and dumped them on his bed. Fully dressed, he crawled weakly under the covers, his body aching to his very bones with the mounting fever. His teeth chattered and his body shivered while he burrowed deeply in.

An hour later his fever broke and he woke drenched with sweat. Weak as a kitten, he lay in the dark a few minutes, marshalling up the strength to toss off the covers and drag himself from the bed.

He slowly stripped off the linens and threw them into a corner. By the time he finished, the fever had started to rise again and with it, the racking chills.

With considerable effort he bathed his face, neck and upper body, using the tepid, but fresh water from the basin, hoping it'd bring the fever down. Examining the wound on his thigh, he realized the swelling had increased and the bandage now seeped with yellow fluid.

Damn!
An infection, he thought. Dr. Bailey would be irate that Gage had forgotten to dress it properly. He washed the area, applied ointment and a clean bandage, and swallowed the remainder of the opiate given him by the logger.

After he'd cleaned his teeth, he found fresh drawers in the dresser, and exhausted, threw himself face down on the plain mattress ticking. His last thought was for the queasiness in his stomach. He should've eaten something.

Gage imagined he'd sleep the slumber of the dead, but instead he dreamed of Bailey.

Dreamed the fever burned through him like hot lava while her cool, perfect hands roamed his body, soothing, caressing. Arousing him even through the heat of his body. He trembled under her smooth touch, groaned as she pressed her mouth to his hot flesh. Shuddered as he pushed himself into the tight, wet warmth of her.

At first the knocking was so faint he thought it was part of his dream. No, don't interrupt such a perfect fantasy, he groused, and drifted back into it. Once again the sound pierced his slumber, confusing him as he hovered between reality and the promised release of the dream.

In his imagination, Bailey whispered his name. "Tucker," she moaned while her beautiful body writhed beneath him. He groaned her name aloud as he tumbled into Heaven.

At last the rattle of the knob and the harsh whisper broke through his sleep. "Gage, are you in there?"

More knocking and the shuffle of footsteps in the corridor. "Tucker, it's Bailey."

#

Meghan knew she risked her entire reputation, as well as her teaching position in the community, by being here at Gage's boarding house – by being here right outside his door. Risked not only her good name, but her father's as well.

When she'd awakened after sleeping only an hour, she realized she wouldn't rest further until she saw Gage. Till she knew for certain he was sufficiently recovered.

She couldn't seem to help herself fretting about him, and the compulsion irritated her. She'd worried about the dratted fool since Sergeant Henderson had described how ill he looked.

She wasn't fooling herself, though. Deep in her heart, she knew that more than fear for Tucker's health drove her.

All these years she'd considered the feelings she'd harbored for Gage were childish crushes, but that night in the Swamp shack had turned her mind around. Had changed everything.

She wanted to explore what lay beyond the fierce beating of her heart and the longings that made her restless and sleepless and utterly willing to sacrifice anything to see him again. To touch him again.

She'd dressed once more in trousers, a coat and cap, but standing outside his rooms, she now found her courage had deserted her. Her heart pounded like a marching band in her chest and she couldn't breathe properly. She rubbed her damp palms on her trousers.

No one had seen her sneak into the side door of the boarding house, creep through the empty kitchen and up the stairs to the long corridor, but if she stood here much longer, screwing up her courage, she'd be caught.

She knocked quietly, wanting nothing so much as to turn tail and run. When he didn't answer, she grew more worried and twisted the knob.

Suddenly there he stood, mere feet from her. Hair mussed and wild, eyes hard and angry, he wore nothing but drawers and miles of beautiful muscled flesh.

Her heart notched up another beat.

When he recognized her, he reached out, grabbed her wrist in a painful grip, and jerked her inside the room, shutting the door quietly behind him. His hand on her wrist was dry and hot and the room had a fetid odor.

Gage turned around and leaned back against the door, eyeing her warily. She saw the raised bumps on his arms and chest, watched him clench his teeth against their chattering.

This close she could hear his panting, harsh and heavy as though he'd been running a great distance. A faint sheen of sweat glimmered on his brow and his eyes were stormy and savage.

"What the fuck are you doing, Bailey?" he growled at last, dragging her across the room and shoving her into a chair.

She'd never heard him swear so violently before, and that along with the shock of his half-clothed body and his ill look set her heart to skittering. She stood and stepped closer to him.

"I came to check on you," she whispered.

As if by compulsion, he smashed her against him. She stared up at his chin, unable to meet his eyes, crazily aware of every portion where his taut body met hers. The places where her softness met his hardness took on a remembered hunger of blazing lust that befuddled her mind.

Gage scowled at her, lifting her chin to peer into her eyes. "Why are you here? What do you want, Bailey?" She heard the effort to calm himself in the deliberate evenness of his voice. Heard, too, the rasp of weakness there.

He skimmed his other hand down her hair where it'd loosened when her cap fell to the floor. "Don't you know what would happen if you were – were caught – here – in my room?"

"I don't care," she murmured and stood on toes to reach the underside of his jaw where her lips rubbed against the rough whiskers. She shuddered and hugged him fiercely. "You're still ill and I'm not leaving you."

Chapter 32

I'm not leaving you.

Christ, Bailey clearly had no idea what wild need she stirred in him. If she did, she'd run like the devil was on her heels. No, he corrected, not need, lust.

He didn't really
need
Bailey, did he?

He hadn't had a woman in so long that every nerve in his body reacted to her breasts flattened against his naked chest, arousing him even through the fever's confusion. Beast that he was, the urge to take her here, now, burned his veins.

But, surely, just lust. Anatomy. Biological needs.

He backed her against the edge of the bed, let his hands roam possessively over her body. She was
his,
he thought irrationally, knowing Bailey would never belong to anyone. Still, she'd been his since he could remember although he'd been too young and foolish to realize it.